"As she'd said more than once in regard to painting, 'Having to do it for money is a far cry from having to do it because you have to do it.'
Which leads to the fourth member of her blues quartet: art-life gloom. Every other person on the street was the failed consort of one muse or another. One met them everywhere. The would-be guitarist who just couldn't find time to practice, the would-be novelist who developed an allergy to solitude, the would-be actress too weak to withstand domestic and maternalistic urges, the would-be poet who found it easier to get drunk on booze than on language, the would-be filmmaker who for lack of pluck ended up in advertising; the singer, the potter, the dancer who for want of that extra volt of verve, that extra enzyme of dedication, that extra candlepower of courage were doomed to paper the walls of their lives with frustrated fantasies and secret dissatisfactions. Ellen Cherry would breakfast on live cockroaches before she'd turn out like them! She swore it."
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